


Letting Go

by Kass



Category: Stand By Me (1986)
Genre: First Time, M/M, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-17
Updated: 2008-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-01 23:45:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kass/pseuds/Kass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What really happened that night in the forest?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letting Go

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Letting Go](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9001972) by [Regis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regis/pseuds/Regis)



> Written for tiffany rawlins as part of [Yuletide](http://www.intimations.org) 2004\. Many thanks to Sanj for lightning-fast beta!

We talked into the night. The kind of talk that seemed important until you discover girls.

Like, if Mickey's a mouse, and Donald's a duck, and Pluto's a dog, what's Goofy? (We couldn't agree on that one.) Or what one food we would each choose, if it were the only thing we could eat for the rest of our lives. (I picked peanut butter.)

It was like any other time the four of us sat around talking. We could almost have been in Vern's back yard, pretending we were camping in the woods. Except it wasn't any other night. We weren't pretending. The woods were real. And bad things happened out there.

None of us mentioned Ray Brower, but we were all thinking about him. Every sound we heard made the hair stand up on our arms and the backs of our necks. None of us believed in ghosts, exactly, but out there in the dark anything seemed possible.

After a while we settled down. I closed my eyes, and I woke up crying. Chris was whispering, "You were dreaming," but I could still hear my father's voice. (It should have been me, not my brother. It should have. Everybody knew that.)

"I didn't cry at Denny's funeral," I said, desperate for Chris to understand. "I miss him, Chris. I really miss him."

"I know. Go back to sleep." His voice was rough.

But I didn't want to. Not yet. In that moment sleep was worse than the woods. Ray Brower's ghost might not be real, but Denny's was always with me. I wished I could forget him, then hated myself for wishing it because I knew someday it would come true.

I didn't want Chris to go back to standing watch.

"Maybe you could go into the college courses with me," I said. Out of the blue. Looking for something to keep him there with me a little longer.

"That'll be the day." He said it like he didn't care, but I knew better.

"Why not, you're smart enough." He was, too. As smart as me, easy. He just didn't show it.

"Won't let me."

That was when he told me about trying to return the milk money. Mrs. Simms keeping it and never telling the principal. How he got suspended, how she showed up at school the next week with a brand-new skirt.

Tears burned in my chest and the back of my throat again, but it wasn't like crying for Denny. I was white-hot angry at them, all of them, the whole stupid school, for not seeing who he was.

"Oh, who gives a fuck anyway?" Chris' voice cracked. "I just wish I could go to some place where nobody knows me. I guess I'm just a pussy, Gordie."

All I could do was whisper "No way." For a while we didn't move: me lying on my side, the embers and the rest of the guys behind me, Chris crouching on the ground next to me shaking with what had to be sobs, though I couldn't hear them.

"You're the best," I said, lamely, but kept going. "You're strong and smart and I—" I wanted to say I loved him, but you didn't say that kind of thing to another guy.

Chris didn't seem to notice. "I put up a good act, that's all. People who don't know me think I'm tough." He slumped onto the ground, lying on his back next to me.

"I know you."

He turned his head to look at me. There was a pause. "Yeah, you do," he said, finally.

"And I think you're the best person I know."

He gave a little half-smile, crookedly. "Gimme some skin," he said, reaching a hand over. Our palms ghosted past each other and I felt a tingle, like an electric shock.

Maybe it was the forest. Maybe it was the dark. Maybe it was this whole crazy thing, the dead kid we were on our way to find. My mind was working in weird ways that night, and when our hands made that spark I thought, this is what it's supposed to be like when you touch a girl for the first time.

But girls were uninteresting and incomprehensible, and I couldn't imagine that being with a girl could ever feel this way. "It's never going to be like this with a girl," I said, before I could stop the words.

I wasn't even sure what I meant, and I tensed, afraid Chris would take it wrong, but he just nodded. "Yeah."

We lay there, both on our sides now, facing each other in the pitch-black night. The air felt thick, strange.

Chris swallowed hard. "There's...a lot of things better with a guy than with a girl."

I wasn't sure exactly what he was talking about, but my whole body prickled with anticipation. I wasn't surprised Chris knew things I didn't.

I opened my mouth and what came out was "show me."

He inhaled, hard, like he was surprised.

And then he reached over and put his hand on me.

I swallowed a gasp, and closed my eyes, not like I could actually see anything with them open. I'd done this a zillion times, we all had, but it was _different_ with somebody else's hand. Oh, God, it was different.

He reached for the button on my pants and I stopped breathing for a second.

"Okay?" His voice was soft, vulnerable, and that made me not nervous anymore.

"Yeah."

He unbuttoned me and started stroking again. The feel of his hand on my bare skin was too good, and the fact that this was Chris—

In the instant before I came, I could feel the entire forest around us: the air, the trees, the owls, the deer, every living thing. I bit my lip and that was it.

There was total silence. Suddenly I was afraid I'd been breathing too hard, afraid I'd woken the other guys up, but then Vern snored, once, and my heart slowed back to normal.

Chris fumbled for his bandanna, then handed it to me to wipe up with.

For once, my words weren't there.

"You want me to —" I started.

"Only if you want to." He said it like he didn't care, again.

I did. "Turn around, with your back to me," I whispered. And when he did, I reached around him to unfasten his pants.

It was a little bit awkward, reaching around another body. And it was weird feeling it in my hand but not feeling what I was doing. But the motion was familiar, and I could feel Chris breathing.

When I could tell he was about to lose it, I slowed down. I didn't want it to be over. Maybe I knew it was the only time—that once we left the woods things would be different, that after we found Ray Brower's body we would never be the same.

But he pushed into my hand, hot and desperate, and I closed my grip and let him go.


End file.
